Overused and underappreciated, the common pencil does not get the credit it deserves.

We rave about advances in technology, the introduction of shiny new tablets and mobile devices, and we often hear about how the pen is mightier than the sword, but rarely do we hear someone speak affectionately about the pencil.

“A writer uses a pen instead of a scalpel or blowtorch.”
-Michael Ondaatje

The pen gets all the credit, but the pencil does all the work.

With a crayon, we learn to express ourselves with scribbles and bursts of colour long before we can even understand the concept of vocabulary, but once we have found our voice, the pencil is the next brave step we take in communicating.

Probably the most important writing we will ever do — the process of learning how to form each stroke, dot, and curve of those 26 letters — was done with a pencil. That’s when we begin to arrange the alphabet into something meaningful; it’s when we try, it’s when we dare, and it is when we make mistakes. We learn, then, to rely on the eraser conveniently attached to the pencil top.

I’ve always liked pencils. In fact, I prefer a pencil to the pen. Most likely, it’s because I am left-handed and abhor the stain that builds up on the flesh as you write from left to right, dragging the underside of your hand across all you have accomplished. This factor alone has precluded me from ever using a fountain pen (easily the most admirable of writing instruments) so I have, through the years, developed infinity for the common pencil. Yes, the pencil leaves a shadow, but it is easily washed away.

Above all else, it is the utilitarian nature of the pencil that keeps me connected. The pencil is always available. The pencil is uncomplicated; it does what it does, and does so without promising to do any more.

There is nothing confusing about a pencil. There are no caps to remove (or lose), no buttons to press, and there is no complex inner mechanism involving springs and tubes. A pencil has no clip and it slips easily into a pocket, or behind the ear. A pencil is economical and was designed to be used to its fullest efficiency. When the tip becomes dull, you sharpen the lead and continue to write. As the pencil, again, becomes dull, it is once again sharpened. After repeated sharpening, as the nub becomes too tiny to fit comfortably in your hand, you simply take a new pencil (indeed a moment of celebration) and begin anew.

It’s not like a pen, neither an expensive instrument that has to be refilled with ink, or a cheap one made to be used and then tossed away. The pencil leaves little waste behind, and much of it is biodegradable, while a plastic pen is destined to sit in a landfill for years and years. But let’s not bother thinking about the dead pencil after its work is done, let’s instead talk about the magic a pencil can inspire.

Quickly and easily, a pencil can make dreams come alive. Somehow the pencil makes writing a wholly tactile experience. I’m drawn to the romance of the hearty scratch as the lead meanders across the paper, the pencil sounding out progress. The trail of graphite grey left on the page, whether 2B or not 2B, tells my story. With each pencil stroke there is less of me, but more of myself. You can hear it in the writing, unlike a pen with its smooth ballpoint.

While thought, itself, begins the writing process, the pencil is the next step, transforming snippets and sentences from the idle mind into a workable form. My notebooks and journals are written primarily in pencil as I plan, plot, and structure my projects and poetry. These words, what is written right here, began with notes penciled into a scribbler, random thoughts I jotted down, latter riffing with the reason before sitting down a tapping out the details.

Nothing else feels like the true connection of the familiar hexagon as you take a pencil in hand and place your thoughts directly onto the page. Should you err, the eraser is right there. Pens do not allow the same flexibility; a mistake is a mistake, and those mistakes are often not editable, or are not corrected as efficiently. Show me an ink eraser that actually works without leaving behind a silent smudge, or removing the patina from the paper.

There mere fact that permanence of pen and ink allows less room for revision may be the cause of silent insecurity when using a pen. We are more cautious when writing with a pen. As human beings we all fear mistakes, even more so the inability to make corrections. With the pen allowing less latitude, I’m more inclined towards the pencil.

Pencils take the likelihood of mistakes into account.

Responding to mood and emotion, the same pencil can just as easily leave a crisp line as it can a powerfully thick mark. Each stroke leaves a track on the paper, and you can be as bold as you wish, knowing you can change up your phrasing and rearrange the words with confidence.

Not only does a pencil have a purpose, its purpose is true. A pencil will work anywhere, in rain, in heat, even in the soul-crushing frigidity of a -40 degree Manitoba winter. And it will work until it no longer can, and then make room for another pencil.

In these days of debate as to whether cursive writing should be continued in the school system, we might even want to take a step back and look at writing instruments, and the use of the pencil itself.

Laptops and tablets are used in the classroom at earlier levels, denying the student the pure pleasure of using a pencil and letting their thoughts wander across the blank page. We are blessed with fingers and thumbs (the digit which separates us from the animals) to hold a pencil, and the manual dexterity to communicate with our hands, and to leave our mark. I’m not sure the thumb tapping and swiping allows the same development of fine motor skills (or the thought process for that matter). Handwriting: if we don’t use it, do we then lose it?

Now, I’m not particularly fussy about my pencils. I do, indeed, have favorites brands, but mostly I write with what is available. And (in full disclosure of one of my few nerdy traits) I always carry a few spare pencils, with a sharpener, in my pencil case.

Like a kid, I am attracted to the pencil colours and designs often available seasonally, but these less-than-serious offerings are just momentary infatuations. Though I have a couple of skull and crossbones pencils I save for particularly dangerous writing, I’m pretty much content with the standard yellow pencil.

Much like people, it is not what’s on the outside, but the inner core that truly matters.

 

© 2015 j.g. lewis

 

“No one has yet tested the pencil to see how many words it can write.”
– Xi Chuan

March 30 is National Pencil Day.

A pencil speaks everyone’s language.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You’ve been dreaming as long as you’ve been living. Restful or restless, the visions, images, thoughts and ideas that come to you at night play a major role in how we function during our waking hours.

   Dreams are a part of living and, for many of us, a reason to live.

   We all know what it is like to dream — a natural function, all done during the tranquil hours where the body is immobile — but few take the time to capitalize on the train of thought that flows through the mind while the rest of you is motionless.

   Your mind is a flurry while sleeping, recounting people; places, scenes and faces; deep thought and deeper fears are all a part of your dreaming state. Whether frustration-fuelled or alcohol-kissed, thoughts travel far and wide throughout the mist. Never is the mind still. Research indicates the mind may be more active, and more powerful, during sleep than it is while you are awake.

   We are always thinking while we dream, but how often do we take the time to consider how we dream, or why? Although it is an activity we partake in for more than a third of our lives, do we ever give sleep (or the act or art of sleeping) our undivided attention?

 

© 2017 j.g. lewis

On Monday, the Ontario government removed the COVID-19 restrictions that made masks mandatory in public spaces.

Yesterday I donned a mask, as I have for the past two years. Having some sort of personal facial covering has simply become a habit. This is a habit I intend on keeping for a while.

Masks have been a controversial topic in this country for months, the biggest example being the trucker’s convoy and occupation of downtown Ottawa. Protestors found masks, among many others things, an affront to personal freedoms.

Now, I didn’t like the fact I had to wear a mask, but I do like the fact that a mask — along with three shots of vaccine, a copious amount of hand sanitizer, a lot of hand washing and physical distancing — has been good for me.

During this pandemic, I did not end up in a hospital on a ventilator. I’m still alive. I attribute this to a diligent focus on personal protection. The mask was, and will remain, a part of my protection plan.

I’m protecting myself, and everybody else.

I believe the mask restrictions were removed too early. This government should have, at least, waited until the end of the month after enough time had elapsed after all school breaks. There was a lot of travel by Ontario residents over the past weeks. How has this virus continued to spread?

I remain concerned about the ebb and flow of COVID-18 numbers, the advance of another potential strain of the virus, and the fluctuation of rates from day to day.

I am concerned bout public health. I’m not so sure the powers that be are thinking along the same lines. I believe the changes in the restrictions and the “loosening up” was driven by politics and not science. We have a provincial election in June and the present government is doing its best to present itself in favourable light.

We can only hope — more for public safety sake than for political posture — that the move to remove restrictions doesn’t backfire and we end up with an onslaught of cases and hospitalizations.

I’ll keep my mask on for a while and wait to see what happens.

 

I struggled with it. Yesterday, when the flow was right and each letter appeared to be falling into the correct order, and as each word seemed to propel me along, I stopped.

A dead stop, an unmitigated stop. An unintended stop; it was more than a pause, more than a period.

A stop, a full stop; a debilitating stop.

One word

One word was all that was stopping me from continuing with a deeply personal poem I’d been working on. It was a one-syllable word at that.

I didn’t want to use it.

I searched for alternatives, but nothing else worked. Not one other word, or a series thereof, could substitute for the word I had used. No other word could convey the rage, or the frustration, in the exact way this word did.

Fuck.

The F word: it’s one of those words. It’s one of those words that traditionally raise eyebrows. It’s one of those words you are told, as a kid, you shouldn’t say. It was a bad word. I remember my brother said, “fuck”, one time, in the company of my parents. It was the only time. I recall Mom’s eyes bugging out, and Dad always had that look when he turned angry. I learned then I wasn’t going to make the same mistake, ever. Fuck, no way.

Yes, it’s one of those words, one of those fucking words there are really no replacements for, certainly in certain circumstances and depending, of course, on its usage. Check your thesaurus; in many or most (probably all) there are no offerings. I’ve got Roget’s Super Thesaurus 4th Edition on my desk, and it’s not in there. It’s not even offered as a synonym under ‘intercourse’ (which casts doubt upon the book jacket’s “Amazingly Comprehensive” claim).

I don’t use it often, not as often as I should or feel like (more in dialogue than description), and it really has lost its shock appeal; you hear it often in movies and music.

It’s one of those words.

It’s one of those words that has been censored, avoided, painted over, hushed, and stifled for generations. It still appears on public broadcaster’s list of words you cannot say on the airwaves. It’s one of those words that will get bleeped out. It’s one of those words that would get your mouth washed out with soap, or get you sent to the principal’s office. It’s a bad word.

It’s one of those words there are no real replacements for, like ‘peace’ (and I realize the folks at Roget have listed a handful of options for this word but, when you think about it. there are no synonyms, not in the true sense of the word).

Now fuck is in the dictionary, noun and verb (Oxford here). ‘Sexual intercourse’, ‘mess about’, ‘fool around’, and, ah, there it is: ‘expressing anger’ (I knew it fit into what I was writing). It’s no longer listed as slang, as it once was, but it is listed as “A highly taboo word.”

Come on, fuck off: “highly taboo”?

It might have been taboo, at one time, like even before my Grandparents were procreating. Yes, there are times when the word just doesn’t seem appropriate (but they did, by my calculation at least four times), but these days most everybody uses the word, from politicians to sweet little Grade 3 students, and their mothers.

You hear it all the time; sometimes it is not well used, and other times it is placed properly. A lot of times it’s as common as ‘um’ or ‘uh’ or ‘like’, like, you know, like, like that (and I’m sure you do).

It is a word that means so much, and can say so much. It is a word like love (and if you love, you are probably going to fuck, but you don’t have to love to fuck then it’s just sex and if it’s just sex then you are going to fuck a lot . . . but I digress).

I’ve heard fuck described as the Swiss Army Knife of words: a word for all purposes (perhaps not all occasions). It’s so utilitarian, with many functions. It describes rage (fuck you) and joy or happiness (fuck yeah), sheer disappointment (oh fuck), sexuality and sensuality (depending on the accent), be it a mistake or a misfit (fuck up), and for a one-syllable word there are so many inflections which make it sound bigger.

It is a useful word, in the right circumstances, and it is a wholeheartedly purposeful word.

Fuck is a great curse word. It could, or can I suppose, be a hurtful word. But there are many and more hateful words in the vernacular that are publicly acceptable and are used far too often. I can think of words associated with any of the isms (racism, sexism, fascism, capitalism) that I find more offensive, and you can say those words on television and get away with it (it still doesn’t make it right).

It should probably be used more than it is, but it may never be. There are far too many stigmas, stereotypes and old wives tales that will continue to silence the word. Sadly. This world has made progress in so many ways. Times have changed: women can vote (at least on my continent), my gay friends can marry, and even prime time television images can graphically illustrate the actions involved when fucking (they just can’t show certain parts).

Still you can’t say fuck, not everywhere, not when you want to or need to. Not always. 
It’s a bad word. Fuck.

But yesterday, despite my best efforts to find another, it was a good word.

It was the right word.

Fuck yeah.

 

© 2015 j.g. lewis

 

 

 

The seconds, each night, pass. Digits
of the gas pump mark our debt, fossil
fuel emissions cloud our value.

Cost of living; nothing is something and
everything can be changed. Inflation,
a repetitious claim, again and again.

Life goes on. Each night we save a little
time, a few seconds here, to reflect on
the art that gives us something to see.

 

© 2022 j.g. lewis